“Margaret” Returns!

The film critic Mike D’Angelo tweets good news: “Margaret,” Kenneth Lonergan’s extraordinary second film, is coming back this Friday, at New York’s Cinema Village and the rumor is that it will be playing other cities as well. In the meantime, I’ve seen it again (at a press screening last week) and was, this time, overwhelmed by the strength and audacity of Anna Paquin’s lead performance, as an Upper West Side high-school student who goes toe-to-toe with some fairly intimidating authority figures. Paquin herself goes toe-to-toe with some pretty tough and powerful actors (including J. Smith-Cameron, Jeannie Berlin, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, and Jonathan Hadary) and asserts—affirms—blasts out, for her character, a place in the world as she does for herself on the screen.

I’m also, again, amazed by the movie’s depth and scope of political and philosophical ambition—and the personal passion, the emotional power and tenderness with which Lonergan invests it. In this regard, “Margaret” reminded me of John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (the greatest American political movie). It confronts a similar conflict between law and life, and between procedural justice and the sentiment of actual justice; and it similarly tells the secret inner story behind a journalistically solidified public event. I’m looking forward to seeing it again; it’s one of the few movies to be released this year that will be watched, discussed, and loved for many years to come.

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